Were it not for a fortuitous trip to the gym a few weeks ago, I may never have watched Better Off Ted, a brilliant and hilarious show that somehow managed to wind up on ABC Wednesday nights. Ted is a workplace sitcom in the vein of 30 Rock and The Office, but with the cartoonish, crazy elements of those two turned up a few notches.  Underneath the zany, sweet sitcom antics, however, lies a subversive and dark satire of work politics and the kind of mega-corporations that make everything from food to office chairs.

The action centers around Ted, the head of research at a giant conglomerate called Veridian Dynamics – whose real life closest analogue is GE.  Take a look at one of the corporate commercials that are a staple of the show’s opening:

The characters are likeable enough that the standard sitcom-y plots, such as the will-they-or-won’t-they romance of main character Ted and creamer-stealing Linda, could stand on their own as sweet and amusing.  But the brilliance of the show lies in the satire.  Linda points out that the company sends her a bill for the personal calls she makes — although they don’t charge her for them, they just want her to know that they know she’s making them.  ”Is it possible for a company to be bitchy?” she asks.  Faithful scientist Phil is frozen cryogenically, but accidentally thawed by careless movers, leading to unfortunate side effects such as screaming uncontrollably in the middle of a sentence.  Or, like last week’s episode, when the company replaces all the motion sensors that control the lighting and automatic doors with sensors that detect light bouncing off the skin — except the sensors don’t see black people.  The company’s solution?  Hiring minimum-wage white people to follow the black employees around.  Which of course, leads to another problem (which Portia de Rossi explains about halfway through this clip):

The short of it is: Better Off Ted is the funniest show since 30 Rock, and your life is demonstrably worse if you’re not watching it.  It airs Wednesdays at 8:30/7:30c on ABC.